“You have respected my privacy, which to me is a far greater gift than simply fishing me off the road like some little piece of baggage.”
Sam shrugged again. “I would not like it if you went prying into my secrets.”
A gentle knock at the door presaged the first course, rich stew of summer squash and cream, and Marilee waited until the footmen were gone before she spoke again.
“So, it seems we will not pry into each other's secrets, and we will not lie to one another.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “I only forbid you to lie to me. You've not made the same request of me.”
She tilted her head at him, not in the least cowed by his words. “Really? And I suppose being a gentleman wouldn't stop you from lying in the first place?”
“If you think it would, that simply tells me that you have not known many gentlemen.”
Instead of being offended or silenced, Marilee laughed, and Sam felt a jolt run down his spine. The sound felt foreign in the halls of Huntingdon, but he suspected it would be foreign in London, too. It was genuine amusement and pleasure, and when Marilee looked at him, her green eyes danced like stars.
“All right, I suppose you have me there. And I suppose I know why you might have asked me to only tell the truth to you if you know anything about London ladies. Well then, as you are a gentleman, I will ask you to only tell me the truth as well. Does that sound fair?”
“Eminently.”
“All right, so we shall not ask after each other's secrets, and we shall only tell each other the truth. My goodness. What a dull pair we shall make.”
Sam was silent for a moment. It struck him that it was simply possible to ignore her, to let her go about the business of healing and to see her out of his home as soon as he could. That would probably be for the best, both for his own peace of mind as well as whatever business she herself had. However, there was a part of him that turned to her like a plant craving the sun.
Gravely he looked down at the soup in front of them and then at her.
“It's good soup, isn't it?”
“Is it? Why don't you tell me about the worst soup you have ever had?'
He blinked at her strange words while she looked at him with those bright eyes, a warm smile on her face.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because if we must be truthful, and if secrets are not to be allowed, I want to know what is left.”
He was silent long enough that he could see her grow flustered. She was young, he guessed barely into her twenties. She didn't quite have the utterly calculated charm of the high society ladies he knew, not yet, anyway. She lacked their utter assurance that their gambits would be taken with pleasure, and somehow, that was oddly charming to him.
“And what's left is terrible soup?”
“Unless you have some alternatives?”
Sam thought for a moment. “All right. Worst soup that I've ever had… I was just out in society, and I was at a ball being thrown by the Duke of Clathermont and his wife. Everything was... perfectly elegant as I assume you know these things can be. The lights were perfect, the dining room, I was seated between two perfectly charming ladies... then they brought out the soup. Everyone was having such a good time that it took a few moments for us all to catch up. As it turned out, one of the girls in the kitchen had spilled more than a few measures of salt into the soup, and somehow, it made it out to the table.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Oh, dear is right. Everyone was being so very polite about it that it took more than a few bites before anyone would admit that something was wrong. The duke's wife was appalled, of course, and she handled it well, but there it is. Worst soup I've ever had.”
She smiled at him, and Sam found himself unable to take his eyes off the small dimple on her chin. Marilee was a shockingly pretty young woman.
“Thank you for sharing that with me, Sam.”
“I told you about going to a dinner when I was in my early twenties. Why in the world would you thank me for that?”
“Well, have you ever told anyone about that particular dinner before?”
Sam thought about it before shaking his head. “It was never any kind of secret at all.”
“It didn't need to be, but I feel like I know you a little better than I did before.”
Sam didn't respond, choosing instead to focus on his own soup for a few moments. He wanted to tell her that she was daft, that all the things she said were some kind of schoolgirl's babble. For some reason, he found himself not wanting to crush her spirits. For some reason, he found her charming.
They finished breakfast in a companionable silence, and Sam found himself wondering what he could ask her.
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5
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CHAPTER FIVE
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Three days later, Marilee thought that things were going quite well. Huntingdon was a well-run estate full of servants who attended to her needs without asking any intrusive questions, and there seemed to be no sign of the men her stepfather had almost certainly sent after her.
The earl himself, who she was beginning to think of in an over-familiar way as Sam, kept to himself as much as she did, and though she was a little disappointed by that, she told herself it was only appropriate. He had said he would see her returned to wherever she needed to go when her ankle was healed, and he seemed to be a man of his word.
All I need to do is to keep to myself. I just need to stay quiet and gather my strength. When Neptune's Chariot leaves port in three weeks, I'll be on it. And then I'll be safe.
If Marilee was honest with herself, she had not felt safe since her mother was alive. It had been a long year, and she was unsurprised when, away from her stepfather, she finally started to sleep well. Huntingdon gave her a distinct feeling of comfort, almost as if it were a home when her own had been such a contested area for so long.
Of course, there was a limit to how much she could sleep and read, which was how she spent most of her days. After that first morning, she seldom saw the master of the house at all. When she tentatively asked the household staff where he wandered and what he did, she received shrugs and rote answers. Finally, she concluded that they knew as little as she did.
Sam seemed to be as enigmatic to his country staff as he was to the people in London. He roamed the moors until all hours, he slept when he cared to, and though he was never cruel about it, he generally ate when he pleased as well.
The man is like a ghost.
Marilee knew that was a good thing. The less she saw him, the less she would be able to give anything away. No matter how just her cause, there was no getting around the fact that her stepfather was her legal guardian. Sam was a peer, an earl as a matter of fact, and she had noticed that when it came to matters of controlling their women or their children, the peers of the realm tended to act in concert.
When she had that thought, she was surprised by the denial that flew through her. Something in her cried out in defiance of the idea that Sam was anything like her stepfather. She pushed it down, however, slightly startled at the vehemence of the thought.
All I need to do is to keep myself entertained and out of trouble until it's time to get to Hull.
Marilee rather thought she could keep herself out of trouble well enough. The echo of her nurse and her governess' laughter in the back of her head as she had the thought was not comforting, but she brushed them away.
I'll just look around and see what it is I can do.
* * *
That night, when Marilee went to sleep, a thick snow fell, and when she woke up in the morning, a thin layer blanketed the ground. She was grateful it was not thicker, meaning that it might affect the ships entering and leaving Hull, but she couldn't help a soft sigh.
The days of being cooped up in the manor finally got to her, however, and picking up
her crutch, which she was rather beginning to hate, Marilee made her way into the blindingly bright snowy day. It didn't take her long to find her way to the rear courtyard, where there were four children, all under ten, piling the snow up.
“What are you doing?”
The smallest child was the only one who was brave enough to answer her. He stepped up to her, pointing at his own pile of snow.
“We're making snow people, your ladyship. It's all right; my mum the cook gave us permission to play for a while before we have to go back to the kitchen.”
The children looked at Marilee anxiously, and she realized that they were worried she would scold them for being away from their chores, even with the cook's permission.
She smiled at them encouragingly instead.
“Will you show me how to do it? This wasn't something that I did in London.”
The children were nervous at first, but then as she watched, leaning on her crutch, they showed her how they rolled up small snowballs until they were far larger, shaping them into vaguely human-like shapes. When she wanted to try, they refused on the grounds that she would hurt herself. Instead, the three children threw themselves into building a snowman right in front of her as she sat on the bench, squabbling amongst themselves to make sure she got the best snow, the finest shape.
“It's really fine! I'm happy enough to watch you three.”
“But look, miss. See, with these rocks, you can give your snowman a face and everything...”
The smallest child was just piling up a small stack of pebbles for her to use when a dark shadow fell over them.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Like a group of grazing rabbits that had heard the bark of a fox, the children were gone in a trice, pelting toward the kitchens.
Marilee turned to Sam with a reproachful look.
“Was that really necessary? The cook said that they had permission to leave and play for a little while.”
Sam frowned. “I didn't mean to scare them away.”
“Well, perhaps you might try smiling a little. It might make the world just a little less terrified of you.”
He offered her a half-smile that she found surprisingly charming and shrugged. “I suppose that wouldn't hurt. But my question still stands. What are you doing out here? Aren't you worried that you might slip and fall?'
Marilee sighed. “I suppose I should be, but it's so deadly dull inside. I thought that if I did not get some fresh air and some sunlight on my face that I would surely go mad. I was just going to walk around the courtyard when I found the children playing.”
Sam inspected the half-finished figures in the snow dubiously. “Playing at what?”
“They're making snowmen, apparently. We never had the space to do this in London, and anyway, my mother always thought the London snow was too dirty to be out in. Don't tell me that you're not familiar with it yourself?”
He shot her a wry look. “You just learned about them yourself. There's no reason to take that tone with me.”
“But you've lived in the country all this time. Surely, you had some occasion—”
“To build an effigy in snow? No.”
“Well, there's no time like the present, is there, Sam?”
“What are you saying?”
“I'm saying, cup a handful of snow in your hands and then roll it along the ground, picking up more snow as you go. Don't stop until you have reached the size of a head.”
For a moment, she thought she had gone far too far, that he would only give her a stormy look and leave. Instead, after a moment, Sam shrugged and did as she said. In his greatcoat, he was a strange figure grubbing in the snow, but there was something right about it, too.
“You were a serious child, weren't you?”
Sam glanced at her. “I suppose I was at that. Why do you ask?”
“I was just thinking that the way you are building a snowman right now is likely exactly the same as you would have built it back then. Now, I think that's big enough. Why don't you set it on the figure in front of me here?”
They contemplated the figure in front of her for a moment. It was lumpen, more like a standing stone than a person, but Marilee thought she could make out where a face should be. Picking through the pebbles that one of the children had gathered for her, she gave the snowman eyes and a nose as well before stepping back to look at her accomplishment.
“Did you have a happy childhood?”
Marilee glanced at him, but there was nothing suspicious in his gaze. Instead, he stood back with his hands clasped at the small of his back. He watched her with a slightly odd expression, as if he wanted to know everything about her, but was contenting himself with this.
It had been ages since Marilee had spoken of her childhood or even thought of it. “When my mother and my father were alive, it was a happy childhood.”
“Was it?”
“Oh, yes. My father was a fine scholar, even if he was never very strong, and my mother was a great beauty. Our house in London was always full of laughter and light and learning, the three things my father always said could enrich any poor man. He was... so kind.”
“He sounds like an intriguing man.”
Marilee nodded, and to her surprise, she found her throat closing up a little with emotion. “He was.”
She looked up at the cloudless blue sky, watching her breath puff out. She was startled when Sam came to sit next to her on the bench. Slowly, as if afraid he might startle her if he moved too quickly, Sam laid his hand over hers.
“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up anything painful.”
“You haven't. These are good memories, after all. There should be nothing painful about them. And yet…”
“Yes. My father died a few years ago, but my mother died when I was only a boy. It was a quick illness, one that took her almost the very week we discovered it. One moment she was here, and the next, she wasn't, and that left my father and I bereft.”
Sam paused, and Marilee looked at him closely.
“You have never told anyone that, either.”
Sam looked slightly surprised at himself, but he nodded. “I haven't. And I didn't mean to talk over your story if you wanted to say more. It just felt wrong to sit here quietly while you were in pain without... without perhaps sharing some of the pain that I have experienced with you.”
The grief in the back of her throat faded as she gazed at Sam. She wondered again what in the world had driven him out of London, but there were many far older and far wiser than she who had pondered that question.
“Thank you for sharing that with me. I know that you must have thought our pact rather foolish, but... but something about it pleases me.”
Sam laughed, and she thought he would ignore her, but then he nodded. “It pleases me, too. I have never quite had any opportunity to do anything similar.”
“Nor I. But now I confess that I'm getting too chilly to sit still. I should make my way back indoors. Where were you going before you came over to terrorize the young children who were only playing?”
“I was walking the property. I had intended to go look at the west fence today.”
“But now you are not so sure?”
“Well, it will certainly keep. Even if there are major repairs to be made to the fence, most of them will have to wait until spring comes, anyway. That was what I was planning to do.”
Marilee tilted her head to one side, looking at him closely. “I believe I hear a but in your voice.”
“You do. I believe that it is close to noon. Would you care to dine with me?”
Marilee laughed, and for some reason, she felt as light as air. “I would love to.”
She couldn't take him by the arm because she was hanging on to her damnable crutch, but it was terribly pleasant having his presence close to hers, having his smile greet her own. They seemed so very different, but in the end, there was something between them she could not name, like a string that ran from heart to heart, invisible, b
ut undeniably present.
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CHAPTER SIX
Diana Sensational Spinster's Society (The Spinster’s Society) (A Regency Romance Book) Page 27
